Government's Response to the PPSR Review

Bruce Whittaker completed his formal review of the PPSR in March 2015 and his report, containing 394 recommendations, was put to Parliament at that time.  I first wrote to the Attorney Generals' Department in September 2016 asking what progress had been made in assessing the review's recommendations and have begun making something of an annual habit of it ever since.

The request for information and the formal response from the AGD after 18 months consideration can be found HERE, and the response after 30 months can be found HERE.  Some 44 months on from the PPSR Review's release I've received the following response to my latest enquiry requesting an update on the progress of its consideration:

Thank you for your email about the Government’s response to the Review of the Personal Property Securities Act. I am sorry for the delay in responding to you.

Regarding timelines, while the department has made considerable progress on the response to the Review, we are currently consulting with a range of industries and stakeholders regarding a number of the more complex recommendations in the Review.  Following the conclusion of this consultation, the Government intends to release its response to the Review. This is to provide stakeholders with notice of the Government’s position on the review as soon as possible. Following this, the department will undertake broader consultation on the corresponding exposure draft legislation. We are not in a position to provide a release date at this time, but will keep you updated.

With all due respect to the AGD, this doesn't represent any advance on their update last year in which they advised:

The Government intends to release an Exposure Draft of a Bill to amend the Act and a prototype PPS Register, for public consultation. Stakeholders will have an opportunity to provide comment on the Bill and the Register before the Government takes further action to implement the recommendations of the Review.

The Government will make further announcements about the timing of public consultation on the Bill and Register.

If anything, the latest response seems to represent something of a step backwards.

At this stage, it might be worth pointing out that it 'only' took around 2 years from the passing of the 2009 Act to commencement of the Register in the first place (not that anyone considered that to be particularly quick) and we are now approaching 4 years from the presentation of the Review's findings without the Government having even released a response for consultation let alone an implementation strategy.

With so many finding the registration of their security interests on the PPSR an overly complicated exercise fraught with the possibility of error, it is disappointing that there is such delay in implementing recommendations designed to simplify the process and remove many of the Act's pitfalls.